Notes for Alton Sterling

July 11, 2016 by Mariamma Kambon

Intro A video of the cold, violent execution of a prone Black man by white police officers opened my very first day in Louisiana. In transit I may have imagined the famed streets of New Orleans – the fertile land that has nourished Jazz and Rhythm-and-Blues; superb cuisine that just might be reminiscent of my own well-seasoned Caribbean fare; and a renowned debauchery that marks the place as vibrant and outrageous. Alton Sterling’s murder at the hands of NOPD served […]

Categories: Activism, Uncategorized • Tags: African American, African Diaspora, Alton Sterling, Baton Rouge, community, execution, family, freedom, grief, Jo Hines, John C. Mutter, justice, Louisiana, Mariamma Kambon, Michael Eric Dyson, mural, murder, photography, Police brutality, protest, race-based oppression, racism, resistance, Trinidad and Tobago, Triple S Convenience Store

Black and Pretty: Honoring Muhammad Ali

June 29, 2016 by Mariamma Kambon

“He is the property of all people but while he is the property of all people, let us never forget that he is the product of Black people in their struggle to be free.” – Dr. Kevin Cosby, 2016   “Clay is the finest Negro athlete I have ever known, the man who will mean more to his people than any other athlete before him.” – Malcolm X, 1964   It has been stated time and time again that Muhammad […]

Categories: Personalities, Uncategorized • Tags: African American, African Diaspora, Ali Bomaye, Blackness, boxing, Carol St. John, Champion, Civil rights, freedom, Gerald Early, hero, James E. Lewis Jr., Kentucky, legend, Lenox Lewis, Louisville, Malcolm X, Mariamma Kambon, Muhammad Ali, NUCUP, photography, Reverend Kevin Cosby, The Champ, The Greatest, The Greatest of All Time, Toni Morrison, Trinidad and Tobago, Will Smith

The Sacred Collaboration: Paintings by Sophia Dawson

May 2, 2016 by Mariamma Kambon

“I gesso the material black, whether its canvas or wood, I gesso it all black to prepare the surface. It’s a conscious political act for me to work on a black surface … All black. All black everything.” Part I “My greatest inspiration is without a doubt the Almighty God. He is the one who gifted me my talent and I consider myself a co-creator with Him. All the ideas I have are the ones that come from Him. All […]

Categories: Exhibition, Personalities, Uncategorized • Tags: all black everything, black gesso, Black Panther Party, Black Power, Civil rights, Dequi Sadiki, Emory Douglas, Erykah Badu, faith, fine art, freedom, freedom fighter, human rights, I Am Free, Kanye West, Lauryn Hill, Leon Bridges, luz de tu sonrisa, luzdetusonrisa, Mariamma Kambon, mass incarceration, Mondo We Langa, motherhood, New York, Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, painter, PEMDAS, Pharaoh, photography, political prisoners, portraits, Portraiture, prison abolition, resistance, Sam Cooke, Snug Harbor, Sophia Dawson, Staten Island, vision, visual artist, visual arts

A Possibility – multimedia installation

August 27, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

 A Possibility[i] [audio http://f.cl.ly/items/2d2S1G2L2p2q2C2O3e3o/SF21-NOF-compilation.mp3] After my visit to a state prison in North Carolina, the hollow, trapped eyes of the men in worn out prison uniforms stayed with me along with the miles and miles of chain-link fence, the layers of enclosure that separated them from the rest of life. I could have drowned in the bleakness of their interminable sentences and the withering boredom of their days had I not been able to resurrect a semblance of hope for a […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: a possibility, African Diaspora, audio installation, chain link, correctional institution, emancipation, Exhibition, Frederick Douglass, freedom, Gary Snyder Project Space, group show, Harriet Tubman, hope, incarceration, installation, Kongo, liberty, Mariamma Kambon, mass incarceration, Narratives of Freedom, Nat Turner, nkisi sarabanda, ogun, parabolic speaker, prison, rebellion, resistance, sarabanda, Seth Concklin, slavery, syncretism, syncretist, Yoruba

Strange Fruit 21st Century – a Multimedia Installation

August 20, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

Strange Fruit Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
 Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,   1939, a “progressive” New York City nightclub – the Café Society. Billie Holiday beneath a single spotlight. 
 Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
 Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.   The reality of American racism revealed naked and undeniable beneath that light, thrust into plain view by the force of unflinching words, profoundly interpreted by the legendary songstress with […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: enslavement, freedom, Harriet Tubman, Jim Crow, Liberation, lynching, mass incarceration, Michelle Alexander, photography, prison industrial complex, race-based oppression, resistance, segregation, slavery, strange fruit, The New Jim Crow

Finding Moses

July 26, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

They were on the bank of a stream of some width, and apparently a deep and rapid one. The men were afraid to cross; there was no bridge and no boat; but like her great pattern, she went forward into the waters, and the men not knowing what else to do, followed… (Bradford) They called her Moses. Born Araminta Ross in the early 19th century, into the holds of slavery, Harriet Tubman would come to be known as a fearless liberator. […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: A Woman Called Moses, A.M.E. Zion Church, African Liberation, Auburn, emancipation, escape, finding moses, freedom, freedom fighter, gravesite, Harriet Tubman, Harriet Tubman Home, history, icon, Liberation, Moses, New York, photography, slavery